Disgraceland

Atlantic / Canvasback; 2014

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When the Orwells appeared on "Letterman" last January, they did exactly what any upstart rock ‘n’ roll band making their network television debut should do: make complete asses of themselves. The suburban-Chicago quintet chugged through the first verse of their single “Who Needs You” without incident—but by the second verse, frontman Mario Cuomo (no, not that one) stopped singing as if defying some non-existent CBS lip-sync policy, splayed himself across the floor in front of his monitors to perform a couple of yoga bridge poses, and curled up on the couch to become Dave’s most non-communicative guest since Joaquin Phoenix. If the point of the spectacle was to show just how little they give a fuck about impressing the public, it failed miserably: not only did Dave and Paul Shaffer enthusiastically applaud the performance, they begged the befuddled band to keep playing, before Shaffer just took matters into his own hands. In that moment, you can see the daunting challenge the Orwells are up against: to authentically reinvigorate a style of music that, after nearly 50 years of perpetual garage-rock revivals, can now be so easily neutered into geezer-embraced showbiz shtick.

Still not old enough to legally drink in most states but old enough to go to war, the Orwells are fully aware they’re reinventing a wheel that’s been essentially worn down to the rim. As if the Black Lips-inspired juvie-punk of their 2012 debut, Remember When, didn’t make their allegiance to snot-rock tradition obvious, the album was laced with samples of old Elvis interviews and 1950s-era preachers railing against the delinquent effects of rock ‘n’ roll. (Interim B-sides, meanwhile, were given titles like “Open Your Eyes (A Misfits Ripoff)”.) The King connection continues with the band’s first major-label outing, Disgraceland, though this time, the Orwells clearly have loftier ambitions than cracking the Rust Belt garage circuit. With the alt-rock production dream team of Dave Sitek, Chris Coady, and Jim Abbiss behind the boards, the goal appears to be nothing less than supply their generation with an Is This It to call their own—a midwest-slacker answer to the sort of urbane, effortlessly cool rock ‘n’ roll records the Strokes stopped making 10 years ago.

For their part, the Orwells have cleaned up their act quite nicely, scraping away the surface scuzz to foreground Matt O’Keefe and Dominic Corso’s radiant but not-too-glossy guitar lines, while filling out their sound just enough to justify the big-budget production. Cuomo’s lyrical concerns, however, remain as puerile as ever—Disgraceland essentially constitutes a repetitive Groundhog Day-esque cycle of boozin’ and cruisin’ for “a handful of ass.” Not graced with an especially melodic voice, Cuomo doesn’t so much sing his songs as barge into them—on “Norman,” the chasm between his belligerent delivery and the song’s “Just Like Honey”-ed sway is so wide that it's like he’s doing karaoke to his own band. But Cuomo knows how to exploit his limited range to rousing effect, from the Jim Morrison-esque howls that give the simmering psyched-out eruptions of “The Righteous One” some extra heat, to the excitable anti-authoritarian kiss-offs that transform “Who Needs You” into the Orwells’ own “Last Nite” (in the no-tomorrow, rather than yesterday-evening, sense).

“Who Needs You” is also one of a handful of songs here that hints at another of Cuomo’s favorite indulgences—firearms—betraying the more sinister side to modern-day teenage kicks. As he admits at one point, “My daddy’s got a 12-gauge/ I hope I don’t find it,” an uncannily topical line that’s all the more striking given that it pops up in “Gotta Get Down”, an upbeat bubble-grunge highlight that proves, even if the Orwells don’t become the next Strokes, there’s no shame in being a 21st-century Spacehog. Ultimately, they're at their most engaging when maintaining an ironic distance between subject matter and tone: in contrast to the song’s congenial jangle, “Bathroom Tile Blues” sees Cuomo already expressing his ennui toward a hotel-trotting, model-shagging rock-star lifestyle he has yet to actually achieve. But Disgraceland also proves there’s a fine line between writing songs about being bored and just being boring: the atypically stern lead single “Let It Burn” is nihilism-by-numbers with a hookless chorus, while “Dirty Sheets” offers nothing more than love-’em-and-leave-’em lechery. And yet, in contrast to the instant messianic complex so many would-be rock saviors seem to acquire, Cuomo is refreshingly honest about his band’s shortcomings. As he sings, “From the east and to the west, we ain’t the worst, we ain’t the best.” By that measure, Disgraceland is truth in advertising.